TI to invest $60B to manufacture foundational semiconductors in the U.S.
40 comments
·June 19, 2025jppope
Someone correct me here, but Texas Instruments was one of the companies that mortgaged their future in the name of financialization (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/yeah-its-still-water-ben-hunt...) and their market cap right now is ~170B...
How are they going to afford an investment thats ~1/3rd the value of the company? Seems like one of those announcements that no one follows up on to keep them honest?
cchance
They wont its another marketing scam by the admin lol, promise shit now, don't deliver reap benefits till the public/admin forgets, you dont actually have to do shit you just have to say you will same as the last time
bamboozled
It's just pretend to keep the current admin happy, they know he won't be around for long.
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MichaelZuo
Mortgaged what future?
The linked article doesn’t even try to complete the argument… there’s not a single reason offered why TI could plausibly have increased total revenues more… instead of just spinning their wheels from a higher cost base.
Or to put it another way, why wouldn’t that revenue growth have gone to their competitors?, which did in fact happen.
spiderfarmer
Can’t blame them for trying to pry a few dollars from an administration that seems desperate to show some wins.
Moto7451
Especially when the reality of building and permitting will mean someone else, even if it’s from the current administration, will be in power long after the check is cashed and ground broken if it even happens. Because of the time scale there’s plenty of time for the “aw shucks it didn’t work out” if that’s the better path. Hitting a few milestones but not enough to actually break ground can be exceptionally profitable.
Animats
What's a "foundational semiconductor"?
This seems to be a political term, not one the electronics industry uses.[1] "Foundational chips (also called “legacy,” “lagging edge,” and “mature node” semiconductors) are often defined as chips made with a 22nm manufacturing process or above."
Is there actually a lack of 22nm and larger fab capacity in the US? Or is it just that they're not being used much.
[1] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...
JumpCrisscross
> What's a "foundational semiconductor"?
What PA and Fairchild did. We haven’t had a new-entrant opening for fundamental semiconductor design for decades, a fact laid bare in their top engineers’ comp. (No clue if this is what they are actually doing.)
rkagerer
Also known as a PR semiconductor.
cwal37
Also already building a new fab up in Sherman, Texas.
Fabs have pretty decent electricity demand, I actually sited a battery against that one after we did a bit of modeling with the new load vs the solar flows in the area. Siting just means make a land deal, figure out easements, and start working its way through the queue. Might not ever get built though, lot of money and hurdles in the way ha.
Every time I see an industrial announcement like this power is the first thing I think of - where it’s gonna come from and what impact it will have on the existing grid.
alephnerd
Most of these projects invest heavily in renewable energy, becuase the scale makes it cost efficient. During the Biden era, there were a bunch of additional incentives to push for renewable investments in these projects, on top of Texas's very generous renewable tech incentives - most ONG companies began investing heavily in renewables all the way back in the 2000s because they're ENERGY conglomerates first and foremost.
If you have a beating pulse and a strong renewable tech IP, you will raise a seed successfully from the Saudi PIF or Cheveron Ventures even in this market. Sadly, this is HN, not Bookface, so most ideas are bad ideas. Sucks too because it was a very fruitful demo days - one of the more impactful over the past several years.
coliveira
The key phrase here is:
"we are honored to work alongside them and the U.S. government to unleash what’s next in American innovation.”
They're expecting to get money from government to make this happen. If it will be done is anyone's guess.
georgeecollins
This should be one of the biggest wins for US manufacturing since the Foxconn plant in Wisconsin. /s
Moto7451
This is what immediately popped in my mind. What’s that definition of insanity again…
I’d love it if things were streamlined when building. Just as a homeowner it’s amazing how hard it can be to get a permit or an inspection. The lame duct tape fix seems to me some weird CMS and ArcGIS, as if that somehow fixes the human and policy problems.
7thaccount
Do they actually plan this, or is it just to make the current administration happy? $60B sounds like a lot of money.
cwal37
They’ve steadily expanded over the years, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was real. It’s not just calculators, TI chips show up in a lot of military hardware in particular.
bigfatkitten
There are a lot of markets where TI is king, such as in battery management ICs.
UncleOxidant
which generally cost pennies.
cchance
It's 1/3rd the valuation of the company... its not real lol
wahern
It's a "plan" to invest, not necessarily a promise to spend $60 billion in a single year. Spread out over 10-20 years makes it slightly more reasonable, especially once you factor in inflation. Factor in various contingencies, e.g. that they'll build a plant only once they have signed contracts sufficient to make it profitable from day 1, makes it even more reasonable. And contracts would make it easier to borrow and limit direct out-of-pocket expenses.
Though, once you account for all those "but"s, "if"s, and "when"s, one could be forgiven for considering it PR B.S..
duxup
Their announcement seems to be a mix of new and already announced expansions.
idiotsecant
Based on every one of these promises ever, yes. It's probably somewhere between vaporware and a small tertiary facility.
ashwinsundar
What are some things TI promised on, but failed to deliver?
Retric
Number of new jobs for one. They just laid off ~300 people working on an older node in Lehi, Utah, while now claiming they’re going to bring new jobs to Lehi, Utah. Thus “new jobs” don’t really track the actual change in the number of their employees even just at the local level across even moderate timescales.
Similarly hyping up total R&D spending without a tight timeframe is meaningless, they will eventually spend X$ assuming the company survives indefinitely.
More charitably there’s meaningful differences between nodes, but it’s likely a significant portion of the workforce will be rehires.
synack
Last I checked, a lot of the US manufactured dies got shipped overseas for packaging. I wonder when they'll have that capability domestically.
alephnerd
Yes.
CHIPS invested heavily in OSAT and Packaging capacity - especially in TX. Samsung, Micron, OmSemi, and TI took full advantage of that under the Biden admin while Intel and TSMC were fighting on the airwaves to undermine each other.
Much of the rest has been reinvested in SK and India (TI is part of the SCL Mohali modernization RFP) as part of the QUAD+ initiative.
A lot of us in the private and public sector working in this space aren't idiots.
ruined
anyone know if their fab automation scripts are still not under version control
Titan2189
tell us more
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boxboxbox4
[dead]
TMWNN
Title shortened by me from "Texas Instruments plans to invest more than $60 billion to manufacture billions of foundational semiconductors in the U.S."
CNBC: <https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/18/texas-instruments-plans-60-b...>
xyst
Calculator company going big.
sampullman
Every design I've ever seen has something from TI.
analog31
Same here, especially when you consider that they bought Burr-Brown and National Semiconductor.
ashwinsundar
Definitely way more than a "calculator company"...
Eisenstein
Company that made the first commercial transistor and invented the integrated circuit also makes calculators.
See also https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/18/texas-instruments-plans-60-b...